Wednesday, October 08, 2008 Rama: The Black Rifle Disease By Karlon N. Rama Stage Five
PROFOUND apologies to those who waited for naught last Monday. I missed the deadline for the issue due to massive body fatigue brought about by the worst case of BRD I’ve ever experienced so far.
The culprit behind the ailment, which came accompanied by an even worse case of Empty Wallet Syndrome, was the “combat rifle match” sponsored by the Kamagong Gun Club at the AFP Central Command firing range last Sunday.
Over 7,000 rounds of rifle ammunition, plus a couple of hundred pistol rounds, were fired over a span of nine hours that day, as 61 competitors, the biggest attendance in a rifle match in recent club history, took on the five-stage course of fire only the wild mind of a certain Dr. Tyrone Jude Mercader could design.
Half the registered competitors came from the law enforcement sector and the military.
The policemen, according to match registrar Ernie Aliviado, included operators from the Cebu City, Mandaue and Lapu-Lapu Swat as well as a lone shooter from the PNP Security Protection Group, numbered 20.
The team from Mandaue had a lot to fight for. Mayor Jonas Cortes made a surprise appearance to check on his men. The mayor wasn’t disappointed.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines, on the other hand, were represented by 10 soldiers from its elite Light Reaction Battalion, our country’s counterpart to the American Delta Force.
FULL SCALE. The club, with the support the Centcom Chief, Lt. Gen. Pedro Ike Inserto, pulled all the stops to make the match as crazy as no other shooting match can go. This included rolling a fully functional military jeep into the range as parts of the props for stage one, titled ambuscade.
They also brought in a life-sized dummy-cloth and some other material stuffed unto an Air Force jumpsuit that had a balaclava’d rag doll’s head, sewed on gloves as hands and tied at the hemline so that the stuffing won’t burst out - for shooters to carry in stage three, Huey down.
The dummy weighed some 45 pounds dry and twice that when wet. Sunday, unfortunately, was a very wet day.
Worse, the course design had shooters firing at two-inch ceramic tiles at distances of up to 45 yards away.
Roll-over prone mimics having to shoot from what slat is available between the road and the undercarriage of one’s lowered sedan. One has to lie on one’s strong-hand side to shoot while aiming at targets which appear to have rotated 90-degrees to the left.
There was a smattering of paper targets too. But these were placed at distances closer than the range most rifles are zeroed at, forcing shooters to compute and adjust their point of air under time-pressure. Moreover, these were surrounded by “no-shoot” targets that, even if hit by a mere “shoot-through”, meant very stiff penalties.
It was insane.
OUTCOME. Shooters were separated into two categories - Open and Standard - each category classified by the kind of rifles the shooters carried.
In the Open Division,the top spot went to Supt. Cris Tolentino of the PSPG 7.
Among the civilians, the top three went to CPRA’s Bryan Yu and the Kamagong duo of John Melendrez and Gerry Velez were top two, three and four, in the division’s overall standing.
Among the military shooters, the top scorers were Archer Hinong, Eugenio dela Fuente and Willie Asuncion who, in the overall, landed fifth, sixth and eighth, respectively.
In the Standard Division, SPO2 Jun Atuel, the Cebu City Swat’s designated marksman, was on top of the heap.
Among the civilians, the top three spots went to CPRA’s Randy Uy, Andy Chua and myself, representing Kamagong. In the overalls, Randy, Andy and I ranked third, fifth and sixth, respectively.
Among the soldiers, the top three spots went to Sgt. Regalado, Sgt. Sicat and Major Brillantes, first names not given upon registration.
Atuel was merely 18 points above PO3 Gerson Rosende of the Mandaue Swat, who landed 2nd in the overall. Atuel’s colleague at Cebu City Swat, SPO1 Cris Panes, was the third highest scoring cop in the division but was seventh in the overall.
